A rate-adaptive optical transceiver is an optical transceiver that is able to adapt its transmittable bit rate in response to changes in the network in which it is operating. Such a transceiver is able to transmit and receive at two or more distinct bit rates. Typically, in order to transmit at a higher bit rate, more advanced modulation techniques are often needed. The drawback of these more advanced modulation techniques is that they require a larger optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR), and this reduces the distance over which the signal can be transmitted. The net result of this (in overly simplistic terms) is that the rate-adaptive optical transceiver is able to transmit at a high bit rate over a short distance, and is able to transmit at a low bit rate over a long distance. If a rate-adaptive optical transceiver is transmitting at a high bit rate over a short optical path, and that path later fails so that the transceiver must now transmit over a longer path in order to get around the failure, then the transceiver may be required to lower its bit rate in order to transmit over the new distance. At this point, the original transceiver must either drop some of the lower priority traffic it is transmitting, or move some of its traffic to another optical transceiver.